While Chaos reels, and Amber's preparations for the Ball are marred by conflict at the Docks, and intimations of things worse, other things happen across shadow, or have already happened. A sampling, a hardly incomplete list of these events follow in the wake of...the shockwave.
In the shadow Texorami, shadow that Random spent much time, a dust storm whips into the Western flavored town the likes that the populace have never seen before. Scouring and sandblasting its way through the buildings, the windows rattle and the air howls as the storm threatens to bury the entire town. When it is over, a layer of sand a few inches thick fills the square. What is more, and stranger, a statue to the first sheriff of the town, a man named Hank, now sports different features on his face. A more aquiline nose and facial structure, and a crown of laurel leaves on his head...
In another shadow, pilots for the Keltic space navy are surprised when two phantasmal images appear on this screen. Before their eyes, they watch as one of the images literally picks up a lifeless small asteroid and hurls it at the other. The asteroid does not strike, and sails off toward interstellar space. The images themselves do not last much longer than the single throw.
Wards creak and defenses bend at the recently renovated Keep of the Four Worlds. A storm like none from the elemental realm of air pounds at the edifice. Thanks to the new power there, nothing is permanently affected, save for the impromptu moat that surrounds the place for a time thanks to the heavy rains.
Without warning, and out of season, a snowstorm strikes Edo, in yet another shadow. For days afterwards, the populace swear they saw a strange gaijin, a foreigner, in the clouds, directing and encouraging the freak storm. Considering that the battle against their oppressive tyrant is but recently concluded, it is a blow from which the city reels.
Unicorns snort and the Sidhe look surprised from their dwellings as a storm rolls through a Faerie shadow of a different sort. Legends of the Titans are in their own myths, but who would expect to see them marching across the sky, an army of images marshalled against an unseen foe? And that the images would soon disappear, with no trace of magic, no trace of what perpetuated the event?
In the shadow Maeonis, the Queen of that land is surprised to find that, during the evening, a ghost army of Achaean hoplites has arrayed itself outside the city walls of her capital. Their speech is archaic and hard to decipher, but they withdraw, leaving a great wooden horse at the city gates. Sorcerers claim that it was conjured, somehow, by parties unknown. More mysterious is the fact that it is clearly hollow, and was meant to hold men, perhaps soldiers...but it is empty.
In another shadow, a shadow with three suns, a land that never has known darkness, the population of scaly humanoids which inhabits it panic and many go mad when all three suns are eclipsed simultaneously, plunging the world into a darkness that it has never seen before. There is a word that emerges from this unexpected event on this alien world: Night
And the shockwave moves on...toward its inexorable destination.
Posted by Jvstin at April 14, 2003 5:34 PM